Google Chrome Will Now Default to HTML5 Over Flash, Improving Battery Life

Google's latest Chrome version has effectively managed to push HTML5 as the default over Flash. The new Chrome 55 has now almost completely transitioned to HTML5, except for certain Flash-only sites and the top 10 sites on the Web for a year. The new version is now available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Google in August confirmed that it would start de-emphasising Flash and switch to HTML5. In October, Google rolled out Chrome 54 that started using HTML5 embed style for YouTube videos rather than the Flash Player.

According to Google, HTML5 provides faster load times and is more energy efficient when compared to Adobe Flash Player. With HTML5 now becoming the default in the latest version, users will be asked to enable Flash the first time they visit a website that has a Flash element. Google hopes that the prompt will push publishers to convert to HTML5 and ultimately remove Flash as an option.

According to 9to5google, websites where Flash will continue to work for a year by default are: YouTube.com, Facebook.com, Yahoo.com, VK.com, Live.com, Yandex.ru, OK.ru, Twitch.tv, Amazon.com, and Mail.ru.

Chrome 55 also includes CSS automatic hyphenation which will enable the browser to hyphenate words when line-wrapping thereby improving the look of text blocks. 

Chrome 55 on Android - which will release soon - will bring a wider availability of the download feature (introduced with Chrome 54) for offline viewing of pages, images, and videos. A new button will now be displayed on media controls to indicate when a file can be saved.